


secrets to keep

by DeCarabas



Category: Dragon Age II
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-20
Updated: 2017-11-20
Packaged: 2019-02-01 23:17:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,129
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12714819
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DeCarabas/pseuds/DeCarabas
Summary: The first year after Kirkwall, away from Hightown and the Gallows. Leandra and Malcolm build a life together.





	secrets to keep

**Author's Note:**

  * For [GuileandGall](https://archiveofourown.org/users/GuileandGall/gifts).



Leandra used to love to walk along Hightown’s narrow street of luthiers and other instrument-makers, the scents of wood and varnish, the rows of fiddles and mandolins hanging from the rafters, stretching all the way between her home and the theater district. She’d bought her lute from an Antivan woman who smiled little but could coax wood and strings into the most playable, beautifully-toned instruments Leandra could have wished for.

The first winter night in Amaranthine, when she starts to play, she looks up to find a wisp of light floating around her, gradually resolving into the shape of a bird, like something out of a dream. A lark to sing with her. And Malcolm watches the pair of them with a fond smile playing around his lips, so proud of himself for his little trick.

“What, not a hawk?” she teases.

“They can’t carry a tune.” He gestures to himself, self-deprecating; this Hawke’s no better.

And after a moment, he speaks of the lark that used to sing in the courtyard of the Gallows. Unusual for a songbird to make the trip across the water. He’d suspected one of the templars was feeding it.

And she’d never thought of the Gallows as a place anyone might be homesick for, but it had been a home of a sort. And she hasn’t seen any larks in Amaranthine, except for Malcolm’s.

The price she gets for her lute in the Amaranthine market isn’t half what it’s worth, and not nearly what Lord Amell’s daughter would have gotten for it back in Kirkwall, but it’s still more than enough to go to the Mages’ Collective and buy a templar’s silence. And Malcolm looks stricken when he realizes what she’s done, but it was just a lute, and it’s already gone, and there’s no use being silly about it.

And he kisses her, murmurs, “Brave Leandra. Is there anything you can’t do?”

* * *

There are quite a few things she can’t do. Laundry, for one.

Leandra’s hands are sore and reddened, and when Malcolm puts his fingers over hers, she reluctantly says, “We shouldn’t.” The caress of healing magic already sinking into her skin, tingling, soothing. “Who ever heard of a washerwoman with soft hands?”

“You can set a new trend.”

“That makes no sense at all,” she says, trying not to smile.

And what she should say is _no more magic_. That would be safest. Smartest. It’s on the tip of her tongue.

But she thinks it would kill her to ask him to stifle that part of himself completely, even here in their room, even when it’s just the two of them. He’s meant for wonders. Though she’s the only one who gets to see it.

Brave, he calls her, but she hasn’t felt brave at all, not even when stepping on the ship to take her away from Kirkwall. It’s just that she’s found something she’s not willing to let go.

* * *

Their little room overlooks the edge of the alienage, this room that was supposed to be temporary, just until Malcolm found work on one of the outlying farms, somewhere with a few less neighbors, a few less templars. But he’s as skilled a farmhand as she is a laundress, and before she knows it it’s Summerday, and she stands at the window and holds the curtain aside and watches an elven girl in the street below weave a bridal crown out of daisies and Andraste’s Grace.

She’s always known exactly how her wedding would go. The chantry she’s gone to all her life decked in flowers, Mother Elthina speaking the words just as she did for Leandra’s parents. Guillaume’s guests and hers, the list of names nearly unchanged since she was eleven. The ceremony wouldn’t be on Summerday itself, of course. Too old-fashioned. But sometime in the week before.

It’s not forbidden for a mage to marry outside the Circle, strictly speaking. She’d asked Mother Elthina soon after Malcolm proposed. Trying it probably would have gotten Malcolm transferred to the back end of the Anderfels before she could blink, but technically, it’s allowed in the eyes of the Maker.

An apostate, on the other hand. Nothing an apostate does is allowed in the eyes of the Maker, strictly speaking.

It doesn’t matter. As far as anyone in Amaranthine is concerned, Leandra and Malcolm are married. They’d better be. Their landlady wouldn’t have rented to them otherwise.

Malcolm wraps his arms around her from behind, rests his chin on her shoulder, looks out the window with her to where the elven girl has finished her crown.

“I heard an interesting story in the market today,” she tells him. “An old Alamarri Summerday tradition. They used to marry by stealing their brides and running off with them.”

He hums, thoughtful, and raises his head, his beard tickling. “I kidnapped you, did I? Is that what this is?”

“Oh, don’t be silly, _I_ kidnapped _you_. Stole you right out from under the—”

She shouldn’t say Circle, not in front of the open window. But she doesn’t need to say it, and Malcolm presses a soft kiss to her cheek.

* * *

Harvest time comes, and work comes along with it, and on the day they move out of Amaranthine and into their room on one of the outlying farms, Malcolm brings her a lute. It’s not the one she’d brought from Kirkwall, and it can’t produce the sort of clear tones that would fill a Hightown salon, but the sound fills their little room just fine. And quietly, she plays a lullaby.

There are so many ways of checking a child for magic, or preventing it, or driving it out of them. After what happened with her cousin’s children, she’d heard more about it than she ever wanted to. Feed them nothing but crushed embrium blossoms, submerge them in ice water. The most horrible superstitions, and not a one of them true.

But the impulse to search for some hint, some sign, to be able to prepare—she understands that.

Malcolm is meant for wonders, and if anyone else but her ever sees that then they’ll lock him away. And he’s a man grown and in full control, and she worries as it is. She doesn’t have the slightest idea how they’ll begin to explain this to a child, learning to keep secrets right alongside learning to talk.

But a glowing lark floats above the cradle, bright as candlelight, drifting here and there in response to a wave of Malcolm’s hand, as if he were conducting. Singing along with the lullaby. And their little Hawke reaches toward the light.

And every moment like this is one more secret to keep, one more risk, but they’re beautiful and they’re hers and they’re worth the keeping.


End file.
